Tuesday, January 01, 2008

All the Jarrys...

Day 2 of reading through this work, I wonder which of these descriptions refers to the UBU Plays.

I'd call this discreative writing/reading rather than shuffle it in with other forms of writing, dubbed "uncreative": the true development and trajectory here, inasmuch as its leading idea, its locomotive, is creative, is locomotif. A crazy motif that is also mobile. As is the result: I found my mind wandering, sure, but wandering in the mode of investigative questioning as to which book each description belonged, if they are indeed multiple descriptions. Or what book... out of millions. And who or what bleached the ink of certain djs?

Of course what I wonder varies. But today I thought of used book vendors who, working through Amazon and elsewhere, remain out of sight -- not necessarily hidden, but distanced -- and therefore more responsible for accurate descriptions of their goods' condition. This heightened responsibility and accuracy mutates and engenders a new context for the book as fetish object to be shipped. The internet as willing agent, of course, greatly contributing to how book descriptions like these are composed and received.

Shirinyan recontextualizes both composition and receipt, the stamina to keep this new for 50+ pages seems nothing near 'unpublishable;' damn near admirable.

Interesting, too, is to notice how Shirinyan's conceptual starting point fits into this post below: you have to have consumed descriptions of book conditions -- presumably to better write or "fake" their contents -- to write, break lines, and edit with accuracy poems containing descriptions of book conditions.

(Thanks to Stan Apps and the Buffalo Poetics Listserv for pointing me in the direction of UBUWeb's Publishing the Unpublishable.)